Day: January 26, 2013

Those who might have believed that switching the match – and an FA Cup match, of things – to a Friday night were, as things turned out, proved wrong. A crowd of 15,000 turned out at The New Den last night to see Millwall knock Aston Villa out of the FA Cup, a result which can hardly even be considered a major shock when we consider Villa’s dismal recent decent into some sort of mournful form in all competitions over the last few weeks. Indeed, if anything the biggest surprise of the evening might have been that it took Millwall until the eighty-ninth minute to score their winning goal, a header from John Marquis which seemed to demonstrate, yet again, that Aston Villa’s training sessions on defending set pieces most likely consist of getting colouring books out or, perhaps more likely even than this, nap time. The Decline And Fall Of Aston Villa has been well documented over the course the last few weeks, of course, not least on these pages, where to write about them since the start of December has felt like having to write an obituary for somebody that hasn’t quite died yet. It doesn’t feel as if there is much more to say on the subjects of Paul Lambert, Randy Lerner, or the debasement of one of English football’s great institutions that hasn’t been said...

We continue our series featuring archived matches from the clubs of League Two this morning with Leyton Orient, and six matches from the years between the years between 1972 and 1988. The 1970s were good to a club that long been considered the poor relations to other, bigger London clubs and our first match sees Orient – who lopped the “Leyton” from the start of their name in 1966 before putting it back a little over two decades later – play Chelsea in the Fifth Round of the FA Cup in 1972. Our second match comes from two seasons later, and sees Orient, who had been promoted from the Third Division to the Second Division as champions in 1970 and ended up staying there until 1982 , at home against Luton Town in October 1973. Our next two matches both come from the FA Cup. First up is a Third Round against a Derby County who would end that season as the champions of England. It was the 1977/78 season, however, that would provide the club with its finest FA Cup run. The club made the semi-finals of that year’s competition and our match from that cup run is their Fifth Round replay against Chelsea, which was played at Stamford Bridge after the two sides had played out a goalless draw in the first match at Brisbane Road. Our...